Knowledge Center

The Real Power of Digital Advertising

When it comes to digital, the advantages are many: format, flexibility, reach. But to tap into its real power, you need to target the right audience. Posted on Friday, May 26 in Reaching The Right Audience.

Digital advertising is more than just the online equivalent of traditional formats such as print, television, and radio. There isn’t a one-to-one ratio between print and display or television and video. With the rise of the Internet and the advent of the smartphone, digital is always with us, making its reach unsurpassed. But the real power of digital isn’t reach, it’s its ability to reach the right audience at the right time.

Audience Targeting

More than any other format, digital allows advertisers to target audiences based on age, location, and behavior. Audience targeting is a powerful tool for not only maximizing your ad budget, but also reaching the consumers who are most likely to buy. Furthermore, knowing and understanding the audience allows marketers to fine-tune ad messaging to inspire consumer action.

Get to Know Your Customers

You may think that no one knows your customers like you do, but when it comes to targeting, you can always know them better. Digging into details like who they are, where they live, and why they buy will help you discover ways to find and convert consumers just like them.

Here are some questions to consider.

Who are your current customers? Look at any customer data you’ve already collected for demographic and geographic information. If there are holes, consider doing an incentive-based survey.

Who is your competition targeting? If you’re competing for the same customers, it makes sense to look at how and why they win business. Evaluating their approach can help you find opportunities to improve your own.

What drives people to buy your good and services? Once you have the who, it’s time to look at the why. Looking at the psychographics can help you determine why people choose your goods and services, which can help you expand to new targets.

Build Buyer Personas

Once you have a better idea of who your current and potential customers are, it’s time to bring them to life. Buyer personas allow you to create fictional representations of these people to inform your marketing strategy. Giving these people backgrounds, goals, and challenges will allow you to think of them more concretely. With a solid understanding of how they are and what they want, you can begin to see where and how your brand fits into their lives.

Build a Strategy Around Audience

Knowing your audience is just the beginning for creating a digital strategy—actually, it’s more like step two in the process. First you need to determine what your business goals are. And there’s even more work after that, but don’t get overwhelmed.